An Analysis Of The Unnatural Narrative Of Shalimar The Clown

As a British Indian novelist,Salman Rushdie is deemed magnificent in literary circles despite of the disturbances caused by The Satanic Verse.The honour of three times’ winning of the Man Booker Prize has facilitated the upsurge of studies in Salman Rushdie.And researches in Britain,America,India and China have reached terrific achievement.Midnight’s Children is the masterpiece of Rushdie,and the relevant researches are comprehensive,insightful and innovative.Shalimar the Clown which is analyzed in this thesis is another engaging novel since Midnight’s Children.It is a work which reveals the author’s narrative mastery disregards its lesser popularity.The tragic history of Kashmir is told in Shalimar the Clown and the degeneration of Kashmir from Paradise to Hell is presented.Different from normal mimetic narrative,this novel teems with unnatural elements.Previous studies mainly concentrate on perspectives such as politics,religion,culture,identity,history and so on,paying little attention to the narrative strategy of the novel.This thesis starts with the perspective of unnatural narrative,and makes an exploration of the unnatural elements,including impossible narrators,antirealist figures,and unnatural temporalities and space.The thesis is divided into five chapters.Chapter 1: Introducing Salman Rushdie’s life,summing up the plot and theme of Shalimar the Clown,stating the significance and the structure of the thesis;summarizing the international and domestic literature review of Shalimar the Clown;making a brief introduction to the development of unnatural narrative,its basic principles and schools.Chapter 2: Analyzing the impossible narrators in the novel.There are three narrators,Shalimar,Boonyi and India,who are capable of telepathic power,and the main narrator,who is omniscient.Chapter 3: Exploring the antirealist figures in the novel.One of them is Boonyi’s mother,who has talked with Boonyi for several times despite her death for decades.Another woman is the mother of Shalimar.She has been closely involved in the prophecy of snake vengeance.There is also the prophetess in their village Pachigam who could foresee things that will happen and a woman who is a neighbour of India and a witch with potato magic.Chapter 4: Discussing the unnatural temporalities and space.The regressive time line in the text leads readers to go back and forth to the events,and the changing states mentioned in the story break the boundaries between different areas.Chapter 5: Making a conclusion of this thesis.The unnatural narrative is not only innovative but also contributes to the highlighting and deepening of the subject.The devastating influence of Kashmir in the background of postcolonial era is disclosed by the narration of personal story.From the introduction to the conclusion,this thesis revolves around the unnatural narrative of Shalimar the Clown.The whole analysis closely combines the writing background of the novel and the writing purpose of the author,makes an intensive exploration of construing how Salman Rushdie speaks for the neglected individual and the marginalized other through the strategy of unnatural narrative,which appears to be speeding up the development of postcolonial literature.